video review : Falling Down

video review : Falling Down

The most interesting character here is an Army-Navy store owner who also happens to be a sexist racist neo-Nazi. “I’m your friend”, he says to the movie’s actual bad guy, but Bill Foster doesn’t want a friend. He just wants to go home to his wife and kid. The problem is that he’s divorced and the wife has a restraining order against him. He was an abusive husband, she suggests to police, and a nut. His breaking point comes when he gets stuck in a traffic jam one hot day.

From there, the former Notec worker abandons his car and goes on a one-man rampage on his way back “home”. The violent outbursts he lets loose when confronted with even the most minor of annoyances from the people he encounters along the way; his rage is often laced with socio-political rants; serve as an action-packed plot device. It’s the overall believability factor; some of the things he and other characters say or do are over the top; that goes against it.

my rating : 3 of 5

1993

video review : Do The Right Thing

video review : Do The Right Thing

There are plenty of stupid things in this movie, beginning with the opening dance sequence, but the stupidest or at least most annoying are Smiley and Buggin Out. They’re characters who live in Brooklyn and are obsessively infatuated with the black race like seemingly every other black character in this movie. Smiley, who stutters whenever he speaks, is a retard. Buggin Out just acts like one. The problem with the two is that their annoying ways are played-out almost to the point of caricaturization. They come across as virtual cartoons in a movie that’s supposed to be about real life.

It’s a hot summer day and Mookie, who works as a delivery man for an Italian pizzeria, is just trying to get thru life. That’s the gist of a plot that cares more about observing characters in their everyday environment; the neighborhood of Bedford–Stuyvesant; than telling a cohesive story. At one point, the story is temporarily abandoned for an impromptu insult session. That bit too is, of course, all about race. “Tawana (Brawley) told the truth,” reads a graffiti message in a another scene. All this racial tension peaks at the end when a guy named Radio Raheem becomes the victim of police brutality.

my rating : 3 of 5

1989